Over at National Review, Jim Geraghty bemoans the world spanning power of Vladimir Putin:
No Matter Who’s President, Putin Always Seems to Get Away With It
This stuff just makes me shake my head. I mean, what Putin wants is to put the USSR back together again. So far he's managed to reacquire Crimea—which was probably inevitable given its immense strategic value to Russia—and . . .
That's about it. Oh, Putin also has effective control over South Ossetia these days, which has gotten him nothing much except increased fear from all his neighbors, who are even more dedicated to European integration than before.
What else has this mastermind accomplished? There's Syria, but what has that done for him? Nothing. It was just a stupid attempt to poke America in the eye, and it didn't even work at doing that.
And of course, there's Ukraine. But we all remember more about Ukraine than just the past few months, don't we? Putin has been meddling in Ukraine for the past two decades, and he keeps botching it. He put his guy in power and poisoned the opposition leader, which led to the Orange Revolution and closer ties to the West. He did it again and got the Maidan protests—which led to closer ties to the West. Since then, the government of Ukraine has been steadfastly dedicated to pushing away Russia and joining trade agreements with Europe. So now, having failed at literally every attempt to bring Ukraine into his orbit, Putin is left with no options except a military attack.
So what will Putin do? Media reports say he has about 100,000 troops massed on the border of Ukraine, and it's likely that this is about as many as he can put there. About half of them are raw conscripts and the other half are contractors. This might well be enough to occupy Eastern Ukraine, which is generally sympathetic to Russia, but that's about it.
And then what? Keep 100,000 troops there forever? Spend decades fighting a low-intensity conflict with Ukraine? And for what? It's a military rat hole, like Afghanistan or Vietnam.
In a nutshell, over the past couple of decades this supposed geopolitical mastermind has managed to provoke virtually all his neighbors while his ham-handed meddling in elections has annoyed everyone else. Even Sweden and Finland (!) are rethinking their neutrality. What's more, all this has come at the cost of flatlining his economy:
Add to this inflation that's bounced all over the place over the past decade, averaging about 10% per year, and you have an economy that's not likely to make your citizens very happy.
And did I mention Russia's shrinking population? Consider it mentioned.
Look: Putin has had some successes to go along with his failures. He's certainly something of a PR genius. And the truth is that he's working from a weak hand, running a ramshackle country that's way too dependent on resource extraction. You could make an argument that given the degree of difficulty involved, Putin hasn't done badly.
But the geopolitical genius stuff needs to die a well-deserved death. Putin just ain't it.
Everyone blames Putin for giving us Trump, but what about the NYT, and a host of additional 'News' outlets that ran endless articles about 'emails' and 'servers'?
The biggest threat to our democracy is our shite news media. Right now we have rightwing groups openly organizing to undermine the 2024 election and the NYT runs repeat stories on how a war killed civilians. That sucks and should be investigated but the front page, day after day? But, hey they got great video so why not?
> I mean, what Putin wants is to put the USSR back together again.
And how do you know that? Because "it is obvious, everybody knows that, duh!". Back in the day everybody knew that Saddam Hussein had WMD. I remember Kevin Drum being Iraq war supporter, because obviously he had to be disarmed. We don't want the smoking gun to become a mushroom cloud, do we? Everybody knows that. Sure, sure.
> Putin also has effective control over South Ossetia these days, which has gotten him nothing much except increased fear from all his neighbors, who are even more dedicated to European integration than before.
"all his neighbors"????
So Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, etc. are not neighbors (and a host of other former Soviet state who are on friendly terms with Russia)? (ok, technically Armenia is not a neighbor). Actually, the only neighbors unfriendly with Russia are Baltic states, Ukraine, Georgia. The rest are quite ok if not outright friendly with Russia. If you counted, there are at least as many former Soviet states that are ok/friendly with Russia than unfriendly with it.
So if Putin is hell-bent on restoring USSR, why does he not do that? in 2008 Georgian army was wiped out, Putin could have easily taken the whole country, but he just withdrew (from Georgia proper). He could in 2014 and still can easily take over Ukraine. What is stopping him? The military awesomeness of Ukraine? Ukraine is known for a few things, but military prowess is not one of them.
And no, threat of sanctions is not preventing him. The "sanctions from hell" are really an empty threat. Disconnect from SWIFT? not gonna happen. Europeans will never agree. Sanction Russian exports? Never gonna happen. People have been denigrating Russia for exporting oil, gas, minerals, grain. Well, that is not a weakness but great strength. If you have to give up one of the two things - 1) fancy new German luxury automobile, 2) heating for your home, food for your family - which would you give up? Germany exports fancy luxury automobiles, Russia exports oil/gas that heats your home and grain that puts food on your table. So yeah, which would you rather give up?
> What else has this mastermind accomplished? There's Syria, but what has that done for him? Nothing.
Actually, Syria did a lot. It proved to everybody that Russia is (again) a serious geopolitical player. Also proved that Russia can be relied on to help out friends, unlike the US (hi Mubarak guy!).
Incidentally Syria also proved the military prowess of Russia. I think Kevin Drum was one of the quite a few ridiculing Russian military in Sept 2015 when Russia entered Syria and predicting how it will be a quagmire and they will not last long. So how did that quagmire prediction work out? 6+ years later Russia is doing fine in Syria. Compare that with France and UK intervention in Libya in 2012, when after about 4 weeks their militaries were running out of steam (e.g. running out of ammunition, logistics being exhausted, etc.) and they had to beg US for help.
> Spend decades fighting a low-intensity conflict with Ukraine?
The only place where there would be guerilla war against Russia would be in the north-west Ukraine (west of the Dniepr river). Nowhere else. Median age in Ukraine is 41 years. Guerilla wars are made of 20 year old males full of testosterone. Not Ukraine.
Russia under Putin has actually done quite well, given how little they have.
Why don't you take a step back and ponder how poorly the USA has done for comparison. Supposedly the sole remaining super-power. The shining beacon on the hill, with all the awesomeness. We just got run out of Afghanistan by a bunch of poor, illiterate cave dwellers running around with AK-47s. How pathetic is that!
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